@ Labyrinthine; You cannot omit that it's on HBO. If you look closely at how they gain an audience, there's always an over-sexed nature to their first seasons. Even Oz had too much sex in the beginning seasons. If you look at the most current model True Blood, you will find an obvious slope in sex as the seasons go on. Sadly, the sex is needed to gain whatever target audience it is that HBO hooks. Now, that isn't so in regards to the better shows (The Wire, Treme, etc) but that isn't the audience that also sits down to see swords. When it comes to HBO, you're just going to get too much sex too soon. I have always felt that in regards to any off-beat series they throw up.

I haven't read the books, and after years of promising myself, at some point to try and watch an adaptation of a work BEFORE reading it; I feel like I can enjoy the show without any comparisons, and when I decide to read the novels I will not be disappointed, the way I usually am when I watch the movie after I read the book.

I have to agree with you there, govt.spy. I haven't read the books either and I must say, I'm enjoying it so far. The only downside is that whenever I see Mark Addy's king, all I can think about is 'that' dance in the Full Monty...

It will be interesting to see how it all pans out. Then I'll read the books. Honest.

I'm quite happy with episodes 3 & 4. I agree with @jackcrowder about the show being oversexed. But HBO isn't nearly as bad about that as Showtime. Showtime's The Borgias was great right up until the characters all started having sex all the time. I don't really understand this myself; if I want to watch porn I just watch porn. I don't sit through twenty minutes of dialogue to see a few nipples and some carefully arranged stiff thrusting.

I'm way behind on the Borgias, but did they at all use the Milo Manara comic as a reference point for the series? Because I really enjoy that book. Sex and all. What I saw of the pilot of the Borgias seemed a lot more conservative.

I don't know about oversexed... it's pretty analogous to the books. I mean, I can definitely see hBO going "oh, you want to do a fantasy? does it have sex scenes? okay, you're good!" but they didn't have to make them up.

Rootfireember:I'd strongly recommend you NOT read any of the Dexter books past the second one. Concept driven into ground, the one interesting twist

that Rita's kids are budding serial killers that Dexter trains

is over-played and a truly ludicrous one...

(where for a whole book Dexter's Dark Passenger is, literally, a manifestation of the dark god Ba'al) EDIT: Sorry, dark god is Moloch. Either way - utter wank.

...retconned in a single paragraph, in a book that's actually worse than the preceding one. The show is pretty bad later on but actually better than the books. yes, even the Angle/LaGuerta lovesick bollocks.

Back to Game of Thrones... thoroughly enjoying the show, even though I've not read the books & normally get hives from high fantasy sagas. Looking forward to the characters & politicking getting more complex.

We have a regular group of five or six now, watching it on a projector with popcorn on Monday nights. We have this crazy plan to turn watching a digital television series into a weekly ritual. None of us have read the books, but we're all enjoying it, pretty much. Popularity suffered a minor hit on ep 3 as we had been waiting way too long for some violence but ep 4 seemed to leave everyone feeling gorged and eager for the first breath of winter.

The first few minutes of ep 1 have proved to be something of a fantastic tease so far though. Needs more supernatural horrors stalking the woods, less cringey exploitation in the sex scenes. More hacked up bodies laid out in eerie sigils in the snow, fewer utterly mystifying establishing shots of the 'horde'.

Certainly lining up a lot of characters to kill each other anyways. My money is on that Thorn guy, he seemed tough. Nah, just kidding, he's sooo dead.If they just released a pair of characters into the forest each week and had them being hunted down and butchered by malevolent spirit entities then I'd probably be slightly happier at this stage, on balance. The potential is definitely there though. Dinklage/Tyrion is just bloody brilliant.

I'm really enjoying Game of Thrones, without having read the books. I have friends who read them, though, and are happy to fill in any parts of the world that don't seem fully explained. Also, the show has magnificent intro graphics. Just beautiful; I'd tune in every week just for the clockwork mini-world.

It wouldn't be a problem if the sex was handled well. But sex on TV has become bland, artless, and stiff. It's usually kind of awkward and makes me wish I wasn't watching it. It didn't used to be this way. Maybe I was just permanently scarred when I watch that awful semi-hardcore HBO primetime series that featured the hideously disturbing, and fully functional, prosthetic penis.